Rachel Denny Clow/Caller-Times
A condemned home on Leopard Street near City Hall was demolished Monday by Camacho Recycling and Demolition. The company donated its services to tear down the home that was at one point also a funeral home. The Uptown Neighborhood Initiative, a group of local business owners and residents whose mission is to revitalize Uptown Corpus Christi, secured donations of services to remove the building.

Corpus Christi Caller-Times

Rachel Denny Clow/Caller-Times
Manuel Cantu watches as his former place of business and home is demolished on Monday on Leopard Street near City Hall. The Uptown Neighborhood Initiative, a group of local business owners and residents whose mission is to revitalize Uptown Corpus Christi, secured donations of services to remove the building.

Corpus Christi Caller-Times

Rachel Denny Clow/Caller-Times
A condemned home on Leopard Street near City Hall was demolished Monday by Camacho Recycling and Demolition. The company donated its services to tear down the home that was at one point also a funeral home. The Uptown Neighborhood Initiative, a group of local business owners and residents whose mission is to revitalize Uptown Corpus Christi, secured donations of services to remove the building.

Corpus Christi Caller-Times

CORPUS CHRISTI - Among the fond memories Manuel Cantu has of his former home on Leopard Street is the sound of his children playing on the staircase.

They knew to keep quiet during services on the ground floor that served as a funeral home, opened by his father-in-law when the house was purchased more than 80 years ago. Otherwise, they filled it with laughter and yelling as they climbed up and down the stairs.

It is those memories, spread across three generations of Gonzalez and Cantu family members who lived and worked there, that made it so hard to watch as a yellow excavator tore down the home Monday morning.

"It's the most horrible thing I've seen in my life," Cantu said, adding that his wife, Gloria, was too heartbroken to join him at the demolition. "If you live in a house all your life and see it demolished, it hurts."

The 82-year-old said gradual damage to the home by transients after the family moved out in the 1990s made it uninhabitable, and it was condemned and ordered demolished in May by the city. The neighborhood has been a focus of city revitalization efforts, including stronger code enforcement and police presences, since last year.

Juan N. Gonzalez, Gloria's father, moved his family to Corpus Christi from San Antonio in 1931 when Gloria was three months old, Cantu said.

Gonzalez Funeral Home was one of the first Mexican-American-owned businesses of its kind when it opened two years later, Cantu said, and sponsored the first Mexican-American baseball and softball teams in the city.

Cantu became Gonzalez's partner when he married Gloria in 1953. The family moved the funeral home to Baldwin Boulevard after it was damaged by Hurricane Celia in 1970. It became Cantu Funeral Home a few years later, but continued to live on Leopard Street after repairs were made.

The Cantu family moved out in the late 1990s when the increasing transient population made them worry about their safety. It was no longer uncommon to find strangers sleeping on their porch, Cantu said.

Homeless people began squatting in the house and destroyed the interior. During a visit two years ago, Cantu found all the furniture had been stolen, family photos strew on the floor and the copper wiring removed.

Gloria Cantu reached out to the Uptown Neighborhood Initiative, a nonprofit group comprised of residents and business owners set on revitalizing the area, in May when the city ordered the Cantus to demolish the house.

The group helped organize local businesses to donate in-kind services for the demolition, soil to fill in the basement and perform the asbestos inspection. The city and electric company waived their fees, and the Uptown Neighborhood Initiative estimates the total value of donated services is $25,000.

"You see how easy it's coming down?" Chairwoman Darlene Gregory said Monday as the excavator tore through wood and glass. "It needed too much work."

Cantu said his family is grateful to the organization and Gregory for the scope and speed of their help. It was something they otherwise did not have the means to do, Cantu said, but it was still painful to watch.

"All the good memories my wife and I have, it's really hard," he said. "We know we have to do it because its old, and you have to accept it. You have to learn to live with it."